5 Scary Blumhouse Movies (& 5 That Just Aren’t) | ScreenRant – Screen Rant

Blumhouse Productions is a horror movie powerhouse. Though only twenty years old, this production company is responsible for some of the most memorablefor better or worsemovies of the 2000s. Their films have included some of the most famous actors of the last twenty years, including Lupita Nyongo, Lucy Hale, Elizabeth Moss, Patrick Wilson, Ethan Hawke, and more.

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While most of Blumhouse's movies have been box office hits or are popular with the masses for their terror, there are a few films that missed the mark in the horror department. Here is a list of some of Blumhouse's scariest movies, as well as a few that left audiences wanting more.

In 2013, The Purge was added to a growing list of dystopian movies and films that depicted a messed up world set in the not-too-distant future. This film's concept is simple but effective: each year, there's one 12-hour window where all crime is legal. Citizens who choose not to take part in the Purge go under lockdown, but their plans to peacefully pass through the night are naturally disturbed.

Part of what made this film scarry is because its main conceit doesn't seem that far-fetched, especially with the escalating violence of each passing year. The film doesn't rely so much on gore as the terror of an intruder in the home, a theme that will always be reliably horrifying.

This found footage film used a lot of viral marketing to hype its release. However, it didn't live up to expectations, with its predictable jump scares and shaky camera footage. The Gallows tells the story of a group of drama kids eager to put on a play called The Gallowstwenty years after a student named Charlie was accidentally hanged while performing the play.

What follows is a lot of running, screaming, and hiding from Charlie's pissed-off spirit. Some of the kids die, one of them has a big secret,and it all amounts to a terribly paint-by-numbers found-footage film.

Haunted house films are a dime a dozen, so, when a film does right by this classic trope, it is impressive. Insidiousfollows the Lambert family who reaches out to a medium for help. Their son, Dalton, winds up in a coma, and strange occurrences are happening in their large, new home.

This film is an anomaly amongst ghost films in that it focuses on plot and well-written characters instead of relying on CGI for terrors. Some of the most intense moments of the film aren't the product of CGI at all but of a well-placed shadow or a creepy soundtrack.

The first Insidious movie was widely enjoyed by fans and critics alike who praised filmmaker James Wan for his fresh take in the haunted house trope and for using plot and well-developed characters rather than CGI to garner scares. By the time the fourth installment in the series rolled around, however, critics were less than impressed.

RELATED: How Insidious 5 Could Bring Back The Lambert Family

This film acts as a prequel and follows the medium Elisefeatured in all three previous filmsas she looks into the haunted house of her childhood. Though there are a few genuine scares, the film trots out a lot of the same material from the previous films, making the brilliance of the original film feel a little less so.

The home intruder trope is one of the most effective because it is something that could happen to anyone. Similar to the 1967 film Wait Until Dark, Hush takes the trope even further with a heroine who is deaf, thus making the audience more fearful of whether she will survive.

Kate Segal plays the main character, and she brings the same terror and steely resolve as she did while playing Theodora in The Haunting of Hill House. Written and directed by Mike Flanagan, who also wrote and directed Hill House, as well as Doctor Sleep, Hush is a little-known but effective slasher film.

Joining a small cadre of resurrection films like Pet Semetary and Flatliners, The Lazarus Effect tried to prove the point that the dead should stay that way. When a group of medical researchers develops a serum called "Lazarus" that is meant to help coma patients, things go awry when one of their own dies and they decide to give her the serum.

Predictably, she begins to act strangely and proceeds to injure or kill the rest of her team. Though the film continues the conversation of what happens when a person dies, its predictability in both characters and plot points takes away from its message.

While Get Out is not a film about gore or the supernatural, it is a horror movie none the less. Its horror comes from its broader social commentary, the iconic cup stirring scene, and the final reveal of just how complicit Rose is in her family's extracurricular activities.

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Written and directed by Jordan Peele, this film was groundbreaking when it was released in 2017. In addition to the fan's reception, itjoined the ranks of only a handful of horror moviesnominated Academy Awards. Peele earned an Acadamy Award for Best Screenplay for the film.

The sequel to Unbreakable, Splitwas hailed as a return to form for writer and director M. Night Shyamalan. It follows the fate of three girls who are kidnapped by a man with seemingly multiple personalities, played by James McAvoy. Though he delivers in each personality he plays, the plot was mostly predictable: two of the girls die, and the other girl named Casey, played by Anya Taylor-Joy from The Witch), is the "final girl."

The use ofchildhood abuse and self-harm as the things that makes Casey "pure" felt exploitative, as did the use of dissociative identity disorder (DID) as a means to create the villain.

In Sinister, Ethan Hawke is a true-crime author looking to write his next bestseller about a murder and a missing child. He moves his family into the home of the murdered family without telling them, and horror ensues. One of the things that makes the scares in this movie effective is the scary kids doing scary things trope, which is played out in a series of videos that would make any hardcore horror fan's stomach drop.

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Additionally, the soundtrack is one that gets under the audience's skin, and the mounting sense of dread doesn't subside even with the final payoff.

The Oujia board has fascinated people for centuries, so it was only a matter of time before a movie would be made about it. In this 2014 film, a girl named Laine gathers a group of friends together to desperately try to communicate with their friend Debbie, who hung herself with Christmas lights. Things get creepier each time they communicate with what they initially assume to be Debbie's spirit.

Though the film had the potential to be great, it abandoned that all with a predictable plotthat had many similarities to A Haunting In Connecticutand too many jumpscares. It was successful at the box office but widely panned by critics.

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5 Scary Blumhouse Movies (& 5 That Just Aren't) | ScreenRant - Screen Rant

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero